Disclaimer: Kim Possible belongs to Disney.
A/N: It's been a long time. Too long. So my apologies for that. I don't remember why I stopped writing this. Hopefully, I can finish it and complete whatever it was I was trying to stay. To all the readers, thank you. I truly mean that.

Harbinger

A glorious return could only be glorious if there was something to return to. Wade had promised that Kim would be drowning in requests immediately after her website was back in action, but he had been wrong. He had misjudged the people of the world because unlike his savior, he had not been tested. He had not been asked to step over the extremity of humanity. His experiences were small and mostly insignificant.

Kim made an effort to return to hero fighting because it made a statement, not necessarily because she was interested in saving the world. Though she was prepared to follow through on any mission offered to her, she understood things in a way that Wade did not. She knew that her return to life was too fresh for any innocent person to want to risk being the cause of her demise. Neither would any of her former nemeses, at least none that existed in the 'real' world, want to be responsible for killing Kim Possible again. For both victim and villain, it was too heavy a weight to bear.

If Kim Possible was really going to reenter the world stage she would have to rise above her former 'cat stuck in a tree' shenanigans. She would have to appeal to an audience desperate enough to not care about the consequences that could befall a hero. She needed to appeal to the same types of souls that were so desperate for survival that they would watch Shego and her march off into Animatus's trials without question. Ironically, they needed to recreate pieces of Animatus's world to be afforded all the same advantages.

"Maybe we need to try something different." Kim kept her tone wondering. She needed to lead Wade into drawing the conclusions Shego and she had drawn before they had even spoken to Wade the first time.

"I updated the user interface." Wade rubbed at the back of his neck. He had the website pulled up on his laptop and was making a genuine effort to identify exactly what he might have done wrong.

Shego stood in the corner, her arms crossed across her chest, barely able to maintain her silence. Her patience with the naïve man in front of her was beginning to wane. His ignorance was close to outweighing his usefulness. They were operating on a timetable and Wade's bright eyed wonder was disallowing them from moving forward.

Kim swore that she could persuade Wade to see the world as they did. Looking over at the nerd and her partner, Shego had her doubts that Wade would ever think of looking at the darker corners of the human psyche, but she trusted Kim. She trusted that the returning heroine could maneuver her way through the blockades that prevented Wade from seeing the bigger picture. It was necessary for him to see the parts of society that needed to be saved from raping and pillaging soldiers instead of death rays and museum heists.

So, she turned her attention to Athena who was playing with one of Wade's old circuit boards. He had given it to her after seeing her fascination with its function. He had quickly come under the impression that the child was a nerd protégé. He could not have possibly understood just how close he was to unveiling the truth. Though, the word prototype might have been more befitting. Athena was the first and most likely the last of Animatus's ventures into human reproduction. It was doubtful that Animatus had any test subject left that was strong enough to handle gestation. Kim had barely survived it, and by his own admission Kim was his strongest reproduction of the original.

"I know, Wade, and the website looks great, but maybe people aren't looking for what they used to be looking for," it was a blatant insinuation but Kim was tired of talking about dropdown menus and JavaScript plugins. She could sense Shego's growing impatience and knew that it would eventually begin fueling her own.

Wade looked up from his screen. "What do you mean?"

Redirection, Kim had long ago learned, was an art. Often in Animatus's trials she was forced to feign one way so that she could attack from another. "Well, have you kept up with any of the people I helped before?"

"Not really," Wade confessed. He hadn't wanted to keep in touch with anyone who wasn't close to Kim. He didn't like to hear strangers talk about a woman who they knew nothing about, but claimed to have loved. "Do you think we should reach out to them? Let them know that you're back in business?"

"I don't know," Kim shrugged. "It might be worth a try. What's the chances of all of their problems being solved in the years I've been gone?"

The computer genius didn't exactly know why, but his anger at Kim's death began to surface and he had nowhere else to point it except at the people Kim had formerly helped. He felt that they owed her their patronage. They should be the first to step in line to help. Her return to the hero business wasn't whispered into an empty room. Everybody had been talking about it.

"Maybe we need to find you new clients," Wade suggested.

His words made Shego roll her eyes. Finally, the young man was catching a clue. "That might work, Kimmie," she added her voice into the mix. Easily taking on Wade's argument before he had even completely formed it. "Besides, without me out there stealing precious jewels I think the demand for item retrieval has mostly disappeared."

"I guess that makes sense." Kim walked around Wade so that she could look at the webpage he had been staring at. "Who do you think we should advertise to then?"

Wade looked back to Shego, but her attention was already refocused on Athena. She was looking over her daughter, inspecting the pieces of the circuit board the young child was slowly dissecting. "You need to help people that really need it," he whispered. The realization came upon him as he reconciled Athena's innocence paired against Shego's redemption.

Kim followed his gaze. "Children?"

"No," Wade's eyes met Kim's. "Well yes, children but people that really need help. Maybe it's about time someone actually did something about the starving children and oppressed villages, you know?"

"Wade," Kim faked a good natured chuckle, "don't be ridiculous. I'm not some comic book hero. I just want to…"

"Help," Wade interrupted. "You want to save people because that's who you are. So maybe it's time you start saving people who are in such desperate need that they can't look at a webpage and call for help." His chest filled with his passion for the matter at hand. Things suddenly seemed so clear. "Let's face it, Kim, you aren't who you used to be." His eyes traced quickly to Shego and then back. "Neither of you are."

Kim broke their eye contact. She walked over to Shego and Athena. "Stop it from happening again, you mean?" She asked as she sat down next to her lover.

At first glance, Kim and her family were not the faces typically seen on the covers of Hallmark cards. They were mismatched and jagged, but looking at them without preconception, Wade could see that the pieces fit. The jagged edges complimented each other and the mismatched pieces somehow fell together. "We all need to stop it from happening again," the young man declared. "We all need to do better."

"Wait a minute," Shego looked to the woman sitting next to her, "we never talked about this. I'm okay with you fighting the idiots you used to, but this is something completely different."

Kim sighed and laid a placating hand across Shego's knee. "Shego's right, Wade. It's too dangerous and I don't have any backup."

"You have me," Wade immediately pointed towards his chest. "I can't fight with you but I can build all sorts of gadgets that can help."

"Not good enough," Shego declared. "That isn't a guarantee."

"Well maybe Ron," Wade began to say but was quickly cutoff.

"He won't do it," Kim said. Her brief reunion with her ex-boyfriend was still fresh in her memory. Ron had wanted nothing to do with facing off against whatever dastardly plan might come Kim's way. He wasn't interested in watching Kim die again and she wasn't entirely interested in persuading him otherwise.

Wade's eyes drifted from Kim and then locked onto Shego. He looked over her injuries, not quite sure if it was even appropriate to ask whether she ever had hopes of a full recovery. "What about you?"

Shego raised an eyebrow, knowing that it was her turn to steer the conversation towards the foregone conclusion she and Kim had manufactured. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly what I used to be." Her words were a thinly veiled admission of weakness, and a continuation of the façade that told a story far different than the truth.

"But you want that, right?" Wade plowed on ahead. His conviction was quickly becoming his most favored companion. "You want to be like you were before."

"Wade," Kim spoke before Shego could, "don't. Please. It isn't fair."

"I'm not a complete invalid." Shego pulled away from Kim and then made a false show of struggling to stand. "I'm not weak."

"I know that!" Kim immediately offered. "But with what Wade's talking about doing," she turned away. The false truth of her words fell like sparks escaping a raging fire. "You can't do that anymore."

"Don't," Shego harshly whispered. "Don't you dare start pitying me like everyone else."

"Shego." Kim stood prepared to argue all the reasons why her caution came not from pity but rather from love, but she wasn't given the opportunity. Shego was no longer listening.

"Count me in," the plasma wielder told Wade. "I may not be a hero, but I refuse to be a victim."

With her mission complete, Shego turned away from both her lover and the geek. She walked to the door, opened it, and then left leaving no room for further debate. Her part was complete.

Kim watched Shego leave, and kept her silence. Once the door was closed, she turned to her friend, seemingly helpless. "She's not ready for this, Wade." Her voice was rough. Her pain flowed through her words and hinted at some of the torture she had already been forced to survive.

He had not wanted to cause an argument, but in Wade's infinite youth and wisdom he couldn't help but believe he did the right thing. "Give her a chance, Kim. Why not let her be what she once was? Don't you want her to have that chance?"

The hero looked to her child, who seemed oblivious to the weight of the words that had been spoken. "And if she dies?" Kim asked. "What happens then?"

Wade set aside his computer and then stood. He faced his childhood friend, and for the first time since her return, he realized that he had never known Kim Possible. At least, he had never met this side of her—the side that needed to take more than it could give. He had never known the woman's selfishness and had never been exposed to her fearing loss. "You won't let anything happen to her."

Kim reached down and picked her child up. She held Athena close and relished in the feel of her daughter resting against her. "It's not just her pride, Wade?" She told her friend. "She won't risk anything happening to me."

Holding onto his own courage, Wade did not look away. "That's why she should be with you."

"Maybe," Kim softly admitted and then walked to the door. "Find us a mission. Then we'll see," she offered before she opened the door and then walked through it.

Wade didn't say anything to keep her, finally wise enough to know that he should allow Kim to go after her lover. He was just beginning to unravel the connection Kim had to Shego. It didn't quite matter whether he was finally looking without prejudice or whether Kim's deference to Shego ignited his curiosity. Either way, his perceptions had been altered. He was the first of the rabble that would provide them legitimacy.

Kim released a soft breath as she closed the door to Wade's dorm room. She victoriously walked through the halls and then out of the building. Shego was waiting for her. They said nothing as they walked across the campus, nor did they say anything as they settled into the vehicle Betty Director had provided them.

Their silence wasn't broken until they were alone in a space they had claimed for themselves away from observing eyes.

"He doesn't fear you anymore," Kim declared as she wrapped her arms around Shego. "He's rooting for you. Soon enough, the whole world will be rooting for you." If she recognized that her words sounded like some scheme Animatus would devise, then she gave no hint of it. Though, to be fair, it had been so long since they had operated outside of Animatus's world that it was hard to clearly define exactly when a line was being crossed.

"I need more than that." Shego fell into Kim's arms. "I need him to believe in me."

"He will," Kim promised. "But he has to believe in us together before he can believe in you." Kim was Shego's gateway into the world that the former villain had actively renounced. The heralds of her return weren't as enthusiastic as Kim's had been. A past Shego wasn't wholly connected to haunted her efforts to reemerge into society. Redemption was not given, but earned and the pathway to it was only the first in a long line of struggle that both Kim and Shego would need to overcome.

Shego reached behind her and dragged her fingers across the back of Kim's neck. "Time is running out, Kimmie," she whispered. "We both know Animatus will make a move."

Animatus's silence was an omen to his nefarious machinations. He had never been quiet before, at least not when it came to his most successful creations. Shego could feel his robotic hands reaching out to devise another way to lure them back to him. It didn't matter that he had allowed them to walk away. Nor did it matter that he recognized that they had outgrown his environment. He wanted control—that was perhaps his only weakness.

"But he will not risk us," Kim countered. "And he will not risk his research." Her words were more assumption than fact, but they were operating on their own hypotheses and forming their own experiments. If they misjudged then they recalculated until they got it right.

"I suppose so," Shego admitted. "But I much rather us fast forward to the part where I'm not pathetically broken." She understood the necessity of the deception but her pride was getting stepped on and it would not lie dormant forever.

"Soon," Kim kissed the base of her lover's neck, "we will have a mission where there won't be any cameras and no one who cares to expose you will be watching." Her lips trailed a path up until they rested benignly on the curve of Shego's ear. "I promise I'll let you be the hero."

They understood each other—completely and without question. It had not come to them naturally but after years of surviving horrific trials and Animatus's biological interferences, they had managed to develop cohesion. It was with that understanding that Shego knew Kim's offer was mostly hollow. They could not afford anyone finding out that Shego's disablement was a blatant lie. It would take for Shego to 'recover'. That was the planned laid out and it was the one they followed.

Shego turned in Kim's hold so that they were facing each other. "No matter what," she promised, "I will protect you and I will protect Athena." Their whole plan could crumble upon itself before Shego would ever pretend otherwise. "Whatever mission Wade finds for us, just know that I'll kill them all before I let you suffer."

Whether Shego's words were ones of warning or a simple matter of truth, Kim didn't care to know. She knew that they were reaching their turning point. No longer would their reemergence be filled with the simple matters of returning to family and allies. They were on the precipice of staving off and meting out violence that had before remained untouched by their original selves. In that, there was danger—no matter how small there was risk.

"And so will I," Kim admitted as she reached out her hand to rest across Shego's heart. "Athena comes first and so do you." The memory of turning on their community in Animatus's manufactured world was still fresh in her mind. Some of those people had been her friends. The children…had done nothing wrong.

Each and every one of them had been sacrificed because Shego and she had had enough of Animatus and wanted their daughter to be something other than Animatus's prototype. They had craved escape and had not considered any other person but themselves. Sometimes, in her dreams, Kim swore she heard the screams of her friends dying as Animatus's robots tore through the crowd trying to maintain order.

Perhaps her dreams were a sign of her guilt, though she wasn't quite sure if it was guilt she was feeling. She saw no reason to feel guilty about saving her family. Animatus could reanimate more people with which to fill his experiments with. What did one community matter? Rather, what did any of it matter if her child and her lover were immortal slaves to the harbinger of inhumanity?

"They won't see it, not at first," Kim declared, "but we are saving the world."

"Fuck the world," Shego spit out. "They don't deserve it."

"No, maybe not," Kim easily agreed. "But we should try anyway."

They could not be Athena's sole companions—their daughter deserved more than that. Athena deserved a world free of Animatus and any other threat that life might offer. It was their duty, as her parents, to make the world safe. No matter the means and no matter the sacrifice.